Atlas Shrugged

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there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.
She thought: For just a few moments—while this lasts—it is all right to surrender completely—to forget
everything and just permit yourself to feel. She thought: Let go—drop the controls—this is it.
Somewhere on the edge of her mind, under the music, she heard the sound of train wheels. They
knocked in an even rhythm, every fourth knock accented, as if stressing a conscious purpose. She could
relax, because she heard the wheels. She listened to the symphony, thinking: This is why the wheels have
to be kept going, and this is where they're going.
She had never heard that symphony before, but she knew that it was written by Richard Halley. She
recognized the violence and the magnificent intensity. She recognized the style of the theme; it was a
clear, complex melody—at a time when no one wrote melody any longer. . . . She sat looking up at the
ceiling of the car, but she did not see it and she had forgotten where she was. She did not know whether
she was hearing a full symphony orchestra or only the theme; perhaps she was hearing the orchestration
in her own mind.
She thought dimly that there had been premonitory echoes of this theme in all of Richard Halley's work,
through all the years of his long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him suddenly
and knocked him out. This—she thought, listening to the symphony— had been the goal of his struggle.
She remembered half-hinted attempts in his music, phrases that promised it, broken bits of melody that
started but never quite reached it; when Richard Halley wrote this, he . . . She sat up straight. When did
Richard Halley write this?
In the same instant, she realized where she was and wondered for the first time where that music came
from.
A few steps away, at the end of the car, a brakeman was adjusting the controls of the air-conditioner.
He was blond and young. He was whistling the theme of the symphony. She realized that he had been
whistling it for some time and that this was all she had heard.
She watched him incredulously for a while, before she raised her voice to ask, "Tell me please, what are
you whistling?"
The boy turned to her. She met a direct glance and saw an open, eager smile, as if he were sharing a
confidence with a friend. She liked his face—its lines were tight and firm, it did not have that look of
loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had learned to expect in people's faces.
"It's the Halley Concerto," he answered, smiling.
"Which one?"
"The Fifth."
She let a moment pass, before she said slowly and very carefully, "Richard Halley wrote only four
concertos."
The boy's smile vanished. It was as if he were jolted back to reality, just as she had been a few moments
ago. It was as if a shutter were slammed down, and what remained was a face without expression,
impersonal, indifferent and empty.